


Forget Me Not

by stars_bleed_hearts_shine



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: (in reference to the hanahaki symptoms etc), Alternate Universe, Angst and Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hanahaki Disease, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, Trans!Aymeric, idk if I'm adequately tagging this I hope so, lewdest tag: tender hand holding without gloves, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21570979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stars_bleed_hearts_shine/pseuds/stars_bleed_hearts_shine
Summary: When Aymeric had once told Serella she had brought spring back to Ishgard, he had meant it more than just metaphorically. He only wished he could find it in him to tell her thus.Or:Local man afflicted with dandyism, avoids confessing his feelings so much he nearly dies from it.
Relationships: Aymeric de Borel/Warrior of Light
Comments: 16
Kudos: 68
Collections: Final Fantasy XIV - Aymeric de Borel x WoL Recommendations





	1. A Choice of Winter or Spring

**Author's Note:**

> Here's a hanahaki AU twoshot literally no one asked for but wouldn't leave me alone adfjuilghfdlgfjfkasdl I hope you guys enjoy this! I'm hoping to have part 2 up soon! \o/

Aymeric had grown so accustomed to feeling a flutter in his chest when speaking with Serella that he had at first thought little of it beyond how best to _ignore_ it. 

In the beginning, the fluttering had accompanied a thrilling sort of rush from the thought that he would at last be meeting with the warrior whose exploits he had become so enraptured with. _Idolatry,_ he had dismissed it as, and had presumed it would calm in time.

And it had. Until it had returned with the blossoming of their friendship, with coming to learn more of her than her legend, more of Serella than the Warrior of Light. It had been easy to wave it off even then; so unaccustomed to making friends as he was, surely he was just glad to have the opportunity to do so. 

Certainly, Aymeric felt his heart thaw the more time he spent with her— and that he made time for her at all should have clued him in to his own heart— and _perhaps_ it should have been obvious to him, in the way he felt as though he _glowed_ when she was with him, just how much deeper his feelings had begun to take root, how strongly she had planted herself in his life as a permanent presence necessary to his preservation. So unaccustomed to feeling such warmth for another — and _from_ another — as he did with Serella, it had been easier to simply bury such feelings and wait for the fluttering in his chest to go away. Surely, it would stop, he reasoned.

_Surely._

* * *

The first time he coughed up petals, Aymeric had been caught unawares.

He had run into Serella by pure coincidence, though as with every time their paths intersected, they readily fell into step together to speak of the most recent book they were reading in tandem. It hadn’t mattered that they had overshot their destination in the Pillars by a half malm, they had both just hit the point in the murder mystery where the plot had taken an unexpected twist, and Aymeric had shared in her overcharged enthusiasm to discuss where they thought the story was going.

It had happened so suddenly, the realization and the consequence of his feelings both. It had been such a small moment, when Serella had pointed out one of the details in the story’s case to find the killer. As she wove her theory, her eyes of earth and sea glittering with excitement and her smile bright as a lily, he took in her energetic brilliance and something softly soul deep, all on its own, sighed, _I love you._

The thought had startled him so thoroughly that he choked on a gasp in the middle of Serella unwittingly still spinning her theory. The flutter in his chest had returned, though it came accompanied by a strange _rustling_ in his lungs that sent him into a coughing fit.

“Aymeric?” She stepped closer, resting reassuring hands on his back, his forearm, as he nearly doubled over from coughing. When his coughing had turned more productive, he accepted her handkerchief, and winced at the waxy objects that came up when at last he had managed to get his coughing under control.

When he looked down at what he had coughed up to see little yellow petals in the cloth, his mind drew a blank. When had he been near flowers recently? And near enough to have unknowingly _consumed_ them, no less?

Breathlessly reassuring his dear friend (and surely only ever a friend, what else could she have possibly been,) Aymeric made a mental note to see a chirurgeon about the cough if it continued to persist.

As he read enough ahead to see that Serella’s theory had partially been correct that night, he coughed up enough flowers to start a garden, all yellow and frighteningly perplexing. He resolved to see the chirurgeon on the morrow— surely it was treatable. 

_Surely._

* * *

The disease had many names, depending on the region, or so said the chirurgeon the next morning. Garden Lung. Hanahaki. Death Vine. The name mattered little.

For the cardinal sin of _loving someone,_ Aymeric’s lungs were rapidly turning into a terrarium, and in time it would claim his life, if untreated. His options were… few. A cure could be found by his love being requited, or surgery to excise it— and with it, the ability to love _at all,_ for the rest of his life.

“Think it over, Lord Commander.” The chirurgeon had spoken up kindly in the wake of his dazed silence. “It’s in its early stages yet. There is time to consider your options.”

Aymeric wanted to laugh. Of _course_ he would be punished for _love._ Was it divine retribution for loving Hydaelyn’s chosen? Or was this the price for his father’s blood yet coursing through is veins? And all his absolution would cost him was to purge every gentle ilm that he had been reminded lived in his bones.

To forsake spring for decades of winter, or fall softly, sweetly, in the warmth of spring and sleep. Pragmatism demanded he let the ice claim him— what had love done for him but start to kill him, after all, and how could one as spirited and vibrant as the Warrior of Light want someone so anchored in his own obligations? To love him would be to tether her where she might otherwise soar free, he reasoned. 

But then Aymeric thought of the way Serella reminded him how Coerthas felt before the Calamity, how spring settled gently on the skin and warmed him to his bones. He remembered how soft the flowers felt beneath his fingertips, and how her hand in his felt much the same— 

The chirurgeon prescribed medication to slow the process. Surely that would buy him enough time to see Ishgard freed from his father’s cold, iron grip, to see the Gates of Judgement open to all and a new Ishgard shed its oppressive mantle.

_Surely._

* * *

The chirurgeon had warned Aymeric the illness would worsen the more he loved, “whoever it is that’s worth dying for.” Though he had taken the advice to heart, he had not thought it would worsen so quickly.

Serella’s concern for his health when his cough persisted had only exacerbated the problem; unaccustomed to someone caring for his well being, he couldn’t help but fall a little further every time she brought him homemade soup, jars of honey from her bees infused with lemon and ginger, or offered to bring him a fleece blanket from her home.

Inside a _month,_ the petals followed him everywhere— his kerchief, tucked into his armor, was laden with the yellow petals more oft than not. Eventually, it had been impossible to hide; what natural scent had been his was completely overridden by the scent of _flowers,_ even had Serella not seen the petals flutter out of his coat when he moved to cover another cough.

“Those flowers…” Serella said softly, reaching over to touch one of the dry, intact flowers that had come from his coat. She was careful as she smoothed it out, looking at its broad, oval shaped petals with ruffled tips. “Are these...Gladioli? How? These aren’t native to the region…” A ponderous frown creased her brow. 

“They are—” Aymeric choked, on flowers, feelings, and confession alike, for fear of her taking the blame for herself. She could hardly be faulted for not loving him, after all. “—I take my work to one of the greenhouses from time to time.” He admitted to her.

While not an outright lie, a lie by omission all the same. His gut burned with the guilt, even as he felt the roots of his love sink deeper into his lungs, feel the petals of his devotion sway in the breeze of his breath when he let out a shuddering sigh. 

She looked up at him with those dazzling eyes of earth and sea, and all at once he understood how she had so thoroughly became his world. “I hadn’t realized you had an interest in flora,” she said with a grin. “I would have brought you flowers from my garden!”

If only she knew. She already _had._

* * *

By the time the Warriors of Light had uncovered the truth of the Dragonsong War, and the atrocity that his people had committed a millenia ago, Aymeric was _visibly_ ill. 

The worry for what she had been doing, the terror of what could befall her, had all become too much for his beleaguered heart, it seemed, on top of the myriad reasons he had fallen for her in the first place. By the time she had returned and aided Lady Ysayle in convincing the heretics to leave Ishgard peacefully, Aymeric had paled, thinned enough that his armor rattled hollow with his movement. He fought not to sway in time with his breaths, in time with the flowers that moved with his every rustling breath.

But the flowers had been set ablaze with his righteous indignation— at his nation’s history, at how many people had fought and died for a _lie,_ at his father for _perpetuating_ the lie, _profiting_ from it, and letting the disenfranchised _suffer_ for it. 

“A divided Ishgard will not survive.” He said, on his stumbling way out the door.

He was going to die anyroad, for love of someone he should feel naught for. He might as well be the one to confront his father for the crimes against the people Thordan had _done_ naught for.

* * *

They hardly _interrogated_ him after he’d been clapped in irons for fear of outright _killing_ him.

The moment Grinneaux had landed a punch to Aymeric’s ribs, he had spilled the sword lilies from his mouth in a burst of sunlight yellow petals stained faintly in blood. They glowed softly on their gentle path to the stone floor. 

“Stop!” Haumeric ordered. “The Death Vines are deep in his lungs… we cannot kill him before he talks.” 

They found more dextrous flourishes of interrogation in the form of flames and flint daggers, of bloodletting and scorching, instead. The flowers caught fire before they even landed now, with Charibert searing his skin.

All below the collar, of course, on his father’s command, that his execution might look _clean._

By the time Aymeric was found by kinder comrades, he had been left to lie in a bed of his own flowers, his secret well and fully out.


	2. Bloom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This got away from me and is incredibly self indulgent, but I hope this is an enjoyable read anyway!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think I've mentioned this elsewhere with my OC Serella yet, but she's an empath, and the Blessing manifested as an amplification of that, along with her aether sensitivity, so that she can "sense" the emotions/aether of those she's around, though it's all very vague to her (i.e.: sad, tense, happy, but nothing specific) but the more she spends time with someone, the more she can "attune" to them, for lack of a better way to put it. It's referenced a few times in this fic, and I didn't want that to throw anyone off!!!

Aymeric could not bear to look at Serella, even once they had sequestered him back in his quarters that night.

The vines entangled in his lungs _squeezed_ as Serella quietly tended over him, though she had said nary a word once she had all but carried him here.

“I hadn’t realized how grave things were.” She finally broke the silence. He winced, and still could not lift his gaze from his hands fumbling in his lap. “After we found you, Lucia was… _vague_. But the symptoms…there’s only one sickness of its like that I could find, for all my searching.” 

“I know. I have known.” He gathered fistfuls of the blankets to hide the way they trembled. “I should have told you.” _I should have listened. Forgive me, forgive me,_ he lamented.

“I wasn’t owed an explanation,” she dismissed— _by the Fury,_ but she still did not _know…_ “I’m just sorry you’ve been suffering all this time.” 

Unsure of what words would suffice, he said nothing.

Though he sensed she wanted to say more, she joined him in silence. Somehow, that was worse.

* * *

Aymeric’s condition yet worsened in the days following. Still, he stubbornly remained working through it, practically hunched over in the Seat of the Lord Commander as he poured over reports and attempted to _fix_ everything, save for his own heart.

Serella’s visits to his office became a daily occurrence; though he felt guilt for making her fret enough to interrupt her other obligations for him, he was too weak in too many ways to ask her to stop seeing him. Always did she come in with more honey or soup, always with an apologetic smile on her face. She admitted she felt like she was just pestering him at that point, that he must be sick of her coming in every night.

His response was the same, every time. With trembling hands reaching for hers, he would answer, “Pray never doubt I am always glad to see you, my friend— I know the soft warmth of spring when you are near.”

Every time, she would have to help him brace against the bloodied flowers and leaves that would chase his words. She would fuss and prepare him tea, insist on draping a blanket over him when he was not in armor, and he would blame the sickness making him too weak to push her away.

Not knowing how else to possibly preserve himself— or spare Serella the fate of watching him perish— Aymeric postured that he was well enough to stand tall in front of his desk as he tasked the Warrior of Light with an entreatment to Vidofnir for a peace conference. It needed to be done besides, and with her out of sight, he stood a chance of putting her out of his thoughts— and his heart— long enough for his condition to improve, if only marginally.

At least, so he theorized.

Unsurprisingly, Serella at first rebuked such a request, citing his deteriorating health and the instability of the city. While her reasoning was sound, Aymeric remained adamant that if anyone could convince Vidofnir, it would be the Warrior of Warriors who had already earned her good grace. 

“You would ask me to just _leave_ you like this?” She balked.

“I would.”

“But you could be—” She swallowed heavily, and a dark part of Aymeric nearly goaded her into finishing that sentence. “Anything could happen while I was away. Please, let me be your shield—”

His coughing began again, and he lacked the strength to even hide it. His kerchief was inadequate for the flowers that spilled from his lips, blood soaked and many as they were. He let it fall to his desk with a heavy _plop_ and clasped his hand over his mouth. When he swayed, lightheaded from the coughing, he felt Serella hold him up— ah, his legs had buckled underneath him, he realized when he could no longer stand upright by himself. 

If she had not looped his arm over her shoulders, her own arm bracing him around the waist, he would have surely collapsed. Sensing this, his dearest friend practically carried him to his quarters, toward his bed.

The coughing would not _stop,_ no matter what he did, weakly pressing his palm against his chest as he attempted to at least ease the scraping ache in his sternum from the continued abuse. Serella watched, helpless, as he wilted, sitting on his sickbed, at last giving up the veneer of normalcy as he sagged into himself. Once she had hailed Lucia through linkpearl to call the chirurgeons, she knelt before him, her whole being pulled tense with concern.

“This _can’t_ continue.” She insisted, her hand rubbing soothing circles across his back. “You’re only getting worse— I don’t know who it is you—” her voice cracked. With a swallow, she tried again, “I don’t know who it is you love so much… but they _aren’t_ worth dying over, Aymeric. I promise you that. No one is.” She implored him with every ilm of her as she breathed, _“get the operation—”_

_“No!”_ Aymeric’s breath rattled, his coughing devolved into raspy wheezing, the flowers scattered all around him like a macabre funeral offering. 

“Why?!” Serella demanded, and _oh,_ but his weakened heart broke at the tears that gathered in the corners of her eyes. “I…I _can’t—_ what do I do?” She half begged him, and her hand squeezed his. “Tell me where to go. Who to speak with. What to say. Tell me how to fix this.”

His laugh came with the rustling of vines in the breeze, came with a rattle in his chest he knew she could hear. He shook his head sluggishly, though even what minuscule effort he exuded made him faintly dizzy.

“Pray…do not add me to your burdens, my—”

“Tell me how to save you!” She insisted, even as she fought back her own tears.

He looked up at her, then, saw how much she _cared,_ how _worried_ she was for him, and felt… at peace. This was enough. In a lull of his coughing, he anchored himself with a hand on her shoulder, though the other moved to hold her face in his hand. Weakly, he shook his head, “no,” again.

“Then tell me why,” she finally whispered in defeat. “Help me understand. Why won’t you get the operation?” 

Too tired to lie any longer, a half confession tumbled from his tired lips, “‘tis better to die warm in spring than… than endure the numb of winter… is it not?”

The moment he watched her face pale and her eyes widen, he knew she had him figured out.

“Aymeric…?” She whispered so softly he almost missed it. He did not miss the _horror_ in her tone, though he could only hope she did not blame herself. 

All he wanted to do was reassure her thus, that it was _not_ her fault that he was a fool that dared yearn for an out of reach star, but with the _squeeze_ of roots in the walls of his lungs and the surge of flowers on his tongue he was coughing again, wet and coppery.

The doors opened with the commotion of chirurgeons and Lucia in tow, and as he was swarmed with a handful of medical staff she was freed of his weak grip with the slightest tug. It startled him, how little strength he had left. Even as his vision swam, he forced his eyes to stay open as he watched his First Commander begin to lead Serella away.

_“Aymeric?!”_ She called out, but on the chirurgeon’s order, she was ushered out with all due haste. Her wide eyed, panicked stare was the last thing he saw before he had been made to sleep under the healer’s power.

* * *

Serella lie in bed and stared up at the ceiling, her heart as a lead weight pinning her to her bed. 

She had lost track of the tears that ran back into her hair some time ago, and now blinked back the stinging as another wave of them came. Impotently, she attempted to scrub at her eyes to dry them, even as she let out a broken sob.

Her friend was _dying_ — and worse, was dying by _choice_. 

For what? She wanted to demand the answer from him. To make him say who had planted a garden in his chest, who had sowed the seeds of his demise. 

To make him blame her. 

The way he spoke, before she had been made to leave… how many times had he associated her with spring? How many times had he said her name was fitting for how she brought flowers back to Ishgard?

How many times had he tried to tell her he loved her?

And she… even now, she struggled to define what she felt for him for how thoroughly she had buried her feelings. Warmer than friendship by far. She felt as though her heart was safe with him, that she never had to pretend to be anything she wasn’t. Once they had grown to be friends, he had been so eager to know her, not her legend. He _saw_ her— and evidently loved who he saw.

It baffled her. Overwhelmed her.

Pressing the heels of her palms against her eyelids and swallowing her sobs, she exhumed every warm feeling he had ever drawn out of her from the depths of her own heart, and began to examine them more closely. Hours later she found her findings didn’t surprise her, only the fact that _this_ was what it took to get there.

Everything she had felt for him…she had not realized he felt the same; she had simply thought what feelings she had picked up were none but her own, and that he felt nothing at all— surely her Blessing had not faltered once before, she reasoned when she felt naught different when near him than her own affections. If she had known they had simply felt the same for one another…that the swell of that same affection she felt near him was not her own heart fluttering in excitement, but his…

Lucia seemed to almost expect her to come back to the Congregation in the dead of night, geared up to leave again. She hadn’t even managed to ask if she could see him before the First Commander was letting her up the lift and through the Seat of the Lord Commander to his quarters. Remaining without, Lucia ushered Serella inside and closed the door.

It didn’t take long, saying goodbye— primarily because he was yet fitfully sleep— but time seemed to hold its breath when she knelt at his bedside. With care, she removed her leather glove and brushed the backs of her knuckles against the apple of his cheek. Still slumbering, he leaned into the touch with an incoherent murmur. She waited until he quieted before reaching for his hand. It spoke to how feverishly exhausted he was that he didn’t so much as stir when she mapped out the scars and calluses of his hand with the sort of reverence reserved for holy relics, brought it up to her lips, and kissed the backs of his knuckles.

“Don’t you die on me.” She whispered against his skin. “Don’t you _dare.”_

Aymeric did not wake. Serella did not linger.

* * *

By the time Aymeric blearily regained consciousness, he discovered Serella had chosen to follow through with his request— though it startled him to see her brother whittling at his bedside. Uthengentle offered little explanation beyond, “Ellie asked me— and I wanted to anyroad.” and went back to his work with a shrug.

When Aymeric thought of Serella fretting enough over him to ask her brother to stay, he felt that same telltale flutter in his chest… but the cough that followed was dry. That was not to say that he felt wholly _better,_ but such a sign of improvement was welcome after _months_ of deterioration. Even that night, and the nights that followed, though he coughed up those same accursed flowers…they were dried out, once vibrant yellow darkened into a dusky brown. Brittle. _Dead._ The coughing itself diminished greatly. It… it baffled him, even as it gave him a spark of hope that he dare not define.

He clung to the feeble hope that he had been right in his theory. A hope that grew when she had been gone a week and he had been well enough to chance a walk about Foundation with Lord Edmont and Lord Artoirel. He had not coughed up any flowers at all in some few days by then, despite his inability to put the Warrior of Light out of his mind. Even the chirurgeons could not place _why_ he was getting better, as he was still certain his feelings were rather unrequited.

So distracted by what that might mean and his conversation with the Lords Fortemps, he had hardly noticed when someone shouldered their way into him on their way passed. Not until he looked at them and shifted his feet— not until he felt the sharp pinch of something in his stomach that should not be there. Not until he looked down to see the hilt of a knife just below his already dying terrarium of a lung.

It was odd, he reasoned, when he crumpled to his knees and thought of Serella… that there was no cough, no shower of dead petals from his lips, despite his chest tightening in agony. Even as his fevered head pressed against the cold stone floor and he clutched at the wound, he could not help but wonder _why._

As his eyes slipped shut, he prayed to wake, if only for the chance to ask her what that could mean.

* * *

Aymeric awoke shivering from the cold that pressed against his forehead. He couldn’t help the shuddered breath through his teeth. Fighting the urge to writhe in pain at the way his stitches _pulled_ from the motion, he grit his teeth and attempted to ground himself. The cold, wet _thing_ on his forehead was removed.

“Shh, shh, easy, dear one.” A familiar voice soothed, and a hand gently ran through his hair.

With great effort, he opened his eyes and blinked back the fog, startled at the sight of Serella, returned from the Forelands and carefully draping a soft fleece blanket over him. _Cloves and lilies,_ he realized distantly as she situated it over his shoulders and he caught its scent. _Just like her._

“Your sheets were covered in sweat and… and blood.” Serella grimaced, even as she resumed blotting at his forehead. “Figured you could do with something soft.”

Setting the cloth aside, she explained that she had returned to news of the assassination attempt and upon fearing the worst, took his care up for herself to give the chirurgeons reprieve. 

Aymeric felt exhausted, aching, _boneless,_ as though he had every drop of blood and sweat wrung out of him and there was little but a broken husk of himself left, ravaged from the sickness, flames, and blades that he had been besieged by. But when Serella gently brushed his bangs away to kiss his forehead and promise against his skin that she would not leave him to suffer alone…he felt better than he had in _months._ At her suggestion of sleep, his beleaguered body obeyed faster than he might have liked, and drifted off before the warmth from her touch that bloomed on his forehead had cooled.

Scant hours had passed when he next opened his eyes. He found her still seated at his bedside, head pillowed on her arms, dozing on the empty spot next to him. She stirred at his knuckles gently brushing her hair away from her face, and blinked up at him sleepily. He could only imagine the expression he wore, so baffled that she was still there, had watched over him until she could stay awake no longer.

“You stayed.” He rasped in disbelief.

“Of course.” She answered, as if that explained everything, and brought a hand up to press his palm to her cheek.

In light of such evidence, Aymeric watched Serella let go and fuss over medicine, and he reconsidered his recovery theory.

* * *

Serella waited until she was occupied by rummaging in her pack to ask how he had been feeling. A decision made in part to keep her hands busy, but largely to buy herself time to brace for his answer, one way or another.

“Aside from the obvious,” Aymeric replied dryly— ah, his flat humor was a good sign; she’d missed it greatly. “I am far less sick than I was. The coughing has all but stopped.”

Expressing her relief, she asked when he started improving once she had found the pain tonic she was looking for.

“Around the time you left for Anyx Trine, incidentally.” 

Serella nearly dropped the vial.

“O-oh?” She squeaked, and immediately felt ridiculous for it.

“Aye.” Aymeric replied, and when she braved a glance at him, he seemed to be mulling that fact over. “I had initially thought it was because of a change in… _perspective.”_

Serella expressed doubt in that.

“An uneducated guess.” He admitted with a shrug. “I know not what else might have contributed to my improved health.”

Serella spent a long, _long_ moment unsure whether he was being deliberately obtuse or if he genuinely _didn’t know_ …but when his perplexed expression didn’t shift, she had her answer. _No smarter than she in matters of the heart, then…_

“I’ve my own suspicions,” she said, offering him the pain tonic to take. Once he was done grimacing at the taste of the medication, she forewent the chair and instead took a seat on his bed. “Would have to speak with an actual expert on the subject, but…I think they might have been wrong on how it’s cured.”

Aymeric tilted his head in cautious curiosity. Despite his exhaustion, she could tell he had sensed the shift in the room by the flex of his hands against the blanket, in the way his jaw tensed with a heavy swallow. Emboldened by his actions but timid under his gaze, she studied her hands wringing in her lap. 

She had thought this conversation through for hours, _days_ … where had her practiced words gone? 

“I…I think it’s not a matter of someone _just_ returning your feelings, but…but also _choosing_ to…to _give_ those feelings to you, rather than bury them—”

She nearly leapt out of her seat when his hand wrapped around hers. It hadn’t registered how much she was shaking until he softly anchored her. With a breath to brace herself, she met his gaze.

"Serella?” Aymeric rasped quietly. “What are you—”

That fearful want to hope she recognized in his eyes was emboldening as much as it was terrifying, but it was his silence that inspired in her enough bravery to go on. “If your illness would have been cured with nothing but your feelings being returned, then…” Her courage fled, and she looked away. “Then you would have never gotten sick at all, I don’t think.”

“Serella—”

“Stop me from making a fool of myself if I’m wrong.” She said helplessly with an impotent flail of her hands in her lap. “I’m fairly sure you don’t feel as I do, but Lucia _insisted_ otherwise, and the thought that you’ve been suffering because I’m a coward makes me physically _ill,_ and—”

_“Serella—”_ Aymeric said with soft insistence as he moved to sit up. 

When he bodily jerked and pressed a hand to his wound, Serella abandoned her bumbling confession for trying to coax him to lie back down. When she leaned toward him and pressed against his chest to do so, he capitulated— after he pulled her down with him and claimed her lips for himself.

For all their hesitance until that moment, for all the uncertainty and waiting and _hoping_ …meeting in the middle and giving in felt at last like coming _home_. His hands, so warm and smooth with calluses, held her face, his thumbs stroked over her cheekbones. As much as she dared to with his wounds, she sank into him, sank into feeling his own relief wash gently over her. She couldn’t help but wonder how she had never realized what she felt all along was two hearts falling in sync, rather than her own beating on its lonesome, but now, with his heart beneath her palm and her every nerve attuned to him she couldn’t imagine ever being without.

“I love you.” 

They both let out a breathless laugh at how they had both uttered it the moment their lips parted. She wilted against him, her forehead against his, and let her hands map out his face. His own seemed content to move to clutch at her back to pull her those scant ilms closer.

“I’m so sorry I doubted what I felt—”

“I should never have hidden my heart from you—”

With more laughter, giddy and delirious, they decided they had talked enough, and he pulled her back down to kiss her again. He had needed to spend so little strength to coax her into it, she was so starved for him she readily met him again and again, delighting in the way she could feel his very soul sigh of contentment. When he squeezed his arms around her in an attempt to pull himself upright, he broke away from her with a hiss of pain.

Tutting gently that love, while wonderful, does not heal stab wounds, she eased him back onto the pillows— though let out a faint gasp of surprise when he pulled her down with him, to the side not still healing. A faint ripple of hesitancy rolled off of him, that sort of uncertainty that came with not knowing what was a step too far, and he loosened his arms enough that she could leave, should she so choose.

He flinched when she did choose to— enough to pull the blankets back and insist he budge over if he wanted a proper cuddle. The way his whole face lit up when he realized he was not rejected filled her heart fit to burst with light and warmth— or perhaps that was just how he felt, too. She nestled into his side, her head tucked in the crook of his neck as though it had always belonged there. Though his wounds prevented him from turning on his side to properly hold her, his even breathing fanned gently across the crown of her head as he nuzzled into her hair.

She had nearly drifted off to sleep when she heard him softly, quietly ask, “May I hear it again…?”

Smiling against his skin, she said again, “I love you.”

With a shuddering, disbelieving breath, in an even quieter voice he whispered, “Again…?”

Giggling, she obliged. 

“Once more—?”

“Aymeric.” With a huff of laughter, she nudged her face back up to his, and pressed another kiss to his tired pout. It was clear he was fading fast, and the fever, the ache, and the pain tonic were wearing him thin. “Sleep. I’ll tell you again in the morning.”

When she settled back against his chest, he brought a hand to the back of her head and pressed faint kisses to the top of her head.

“I love you,” he said, his hand stroking through her hair. “I love you,” he repeated, more quietly than the first time. When his fingertips reached the soft ends of her hair, it fell limply against the pillow. “I love you.” He whispered, at last fading out to slumber.

When she felt his uncertainty again, the sort that felt as though he wondered if this was a dream, she reached up to stroke his hair and resolved to be there every morning she could, just to remind him that this was real. That they were real. 

Resolving to start with tomorrow, and tomorrow to be their first real steps together, she held him closer and joined him in dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your patience with this! I hit a bit of a wall with it, but I'm overall relieved to get it out of my system!

**Author's Note:**

> What, me? Research flower meanings and flower color meanings to find the one I thought suited Aymeric best? 
> 
> Bet your patootie I did!
> 
> Fun fact for added suffering: Gladioli, or "sword lilies," represent a few things: honor and remembrance, strength of character, faithfulness, sincerity, integrity, infatuation, and tenacity. According to the definition I looked up, based on their name if you give someone Gladioli, you mean to pierce their heart with your earnest affection for them.
> 
> *Yellow* Gladiolus flowers also symbolize cheerfulness and compassion, and I found that detail very important. I like the idea that flowers representing the very things Serella reminded him that he had, are the very things that he's dying from (I'm fun at parties, pray do not look at me so!)


End file.
